


Pan de Muertos

by Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Community: where_no_woman, Dreams, F/M, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-15
Updated: 2010-10-06
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk<br/>on the table: it attracts the dead--</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. George

The first time Winona doesn't clear the table, it's unintentional -- the day's been well over 38 degrees and there's no hint of a breeze so opening the windows with nightfall hasn't cooled the house, Jim's a squalling, screaming, colicky mess and Sam's competing with his brother to see who can yell the loudest, the most intensely and Winona isn't proud but she manages to silence both of them by slamming her hands down on her grandmother's real-oak table and shouting "_Enough_."

Three-year-old Sam stares across at her, wide-eyed, and infant Jim in the sling against her chest pauses in his wailing to hiccup and whimper and she takes advantage of the quiet to ask Sam if he's finished his supper. He nods, and she tells him to go upstairs and play in his room until bedtime. He's three, and he should push her and try to exhibit his independence but apparently she's scared him because he skedaddles.

She picks up Sam's plate and gets halfway to the dishwasher before Jim starts crying again with a muted whimpering sob and she's just exhausted all of a sudden; drops the plate in the sink with a rattle of plastic and drags herself upstairs dry-eyed to collapse in her bed. Offers Jim a nipple he refuses to take and gives up, rubbing her hand over his back, trying to soothe either or both of them.

At some point, she falls asleep; she's jolted awake when a heavy weight settles next to her on the bed. She pulls Jim closer to her and starts to jerk back against the wall, away from this stranger in a room blue-lit by starlight.

Only he isn't a stranger. Jim gurgles when her arm tightens around him at the sight of George sitting on the edge of the bed, eyes just as preternaturally blue as ever; broad shoulders emphasized by the uniforms Starfleet has phased out. Smiling at her.

She has to be dreaming. He reaches out, slowly just like he always would when he'd startled her awake, and his broad palm cups her cheek. Warm and solid, and the metallic tang his hands always picked up from the nav station and the underlying soap-and-musk of George, and she can't speak or swallow around the lump in her throat and can't blink for fear of the tears prickling at the corner of her eyes. So she turns her head and presses her lips against his skin.

His thumb strokes over her cheek. She sighs, unevenly.

"Hey," he says, breaking the silence like it's the most natural thing in the world for him to be sitting here. "That Jimmy?"

She nods, looking down at their son, who's regarding his father with blue-eyed wonder. She wants to open her mouth and snark at George that she's managed to have someone else's child in the four months since his death, but her voice is still knotted up with everything else in her throat.

"You were right. He's beautiful." George's smile deepens. She reaches out to touch the curl at the corner of his mouth she'd forgotten. "He has your nose."

She shakes her head, grimacing.

"It's okay." He catches her with his other hand before she can shake her head again, forces her chin up so she has to look at him. "I know you don't think you can do this alone, Wy, but I know you're wrong. You're still the strongest person I know."

A flare of blue from the window draws his attention and she closes her eyes, half-expecting him to be gone when she opens them again, but his fingers curl tighter in her hair.

"I love you so much," he says, and something shatters in her chest -- she always hears the words but his voice is never like this, never rich and warm like the first time without the edge of desperation from looking down the maw of hell. "But you've got to be more careful about leaving the gate open, kestrel."

He leans in and kisses her, and she wakes up in a sunlit room with her own fingers tangled in her hair and tears running down her cheeks, Jim still sleep-heavy on her chest.


	2. 2 - Richard

Five years later, the night with George is the ghost of a memory of a dream. Sam is eight, and Jim five; both of them growing like proverbial weeds.

Eliana Robau and her daughter Aurelan are visiting; it's Hallowe'en and Ari, Jim and Sam -- full up on chocolate and ghost stories -- chase each other out in the yard under an orange harvest moon. Eliana made _pan de muertos_ from her many-times great-grandmother's recipe a day early; the kitchen where the two women stand, watching their children through the window, is redolent with yeast and the bitter tang of anise.

Focused on wiping the last of the crumbs from the grout around her sink, Winona tells Eliana she's thinking about re-enlisting.

"I think you should," Eliana says, brushing black hair back off her shoulders.

Winona shrugs. "It's not that simple."

"You're worried about who will take care of your boys." Such a simple summary of Winona's life since the black ship she still dreams about on bad nights, the one she's tried to blueprint a hundred times because she can't for the life of her figure out how something shaped so oddly could begin to form a proper warp bubble. "What about George's parents?"

Jim shrieks -- a happy sound, but it still draws both women's attention to the yard.

"What are they _doing_ out there?" Winona says, watching Aurelan running around and around the thornless honey locust tree to the sound of her youngest son's cheers.

"Don't dodge the question."

"I've never gotten on with George's parents," she says, tugging at her utilitarian ponytail. "I'm afraid of what I'd come home to if they ship me out long-term. Besides -- they're cityfolk."

Eliana leans toward the window. "Aurelan Magdalena Robau! You and Jimmy untie Samuel and come in."

A chorus of children's _awwwws_, but quickly enough they come inside; Ari snatches a small loaf from the cooling rack on the table.

"We're going to camp out in Sam's room," she informs her mother with all the gravitas in her nine-year-old body. Eliana nods.

"Lights out in twenty," Winona adds to another chorus of groans, but Sam elbows Jim in the ribs and mutters something in his ear and the three of them clatter their way upstairs to an outburst of giggling.

"I expected more of a fight about coming in," Eliana observes.

"You used her full name," Winona replies, staring at the table, thinking uncertainly about moving the bread to the refrigerator.

"So I did. You haven't any other family?"

"My folks died when I was little. It was always just Gran and me." She considers, leaning back against the kitchen counter. "I might have some second cousins around somewhere, but nobody I'd know."

"And I'm 'cityfolk,' too."

Winona grimaces, but Eliana laughs and reaches out to pat her arm. "It's okay, _mija_, I know who I am, and you're not wrong. I couldn't live out here, surrounded by so much space and so few people."

"It's not so bad," Winona starts, only to be interrupted by a crash from upstairs. She and Eliana share a look and a sigh, and head off to see what damage has been done.

Winona wakes up from a dream of smothering. The midnight room is unusually red-cast, setting her heart racing in the moment before she remembers she's on Earth. She slips out from beneath Eliana's arm around her waist and the three kids curled up against their legs -- so much for camping out in Sam's room -- to drift over to the window.

"She's gotten so big."

The male voice is close, and Winona nearly comes out of her skin, whipping around and reaching a hand out to the ceramic lamp on the cabinet next to the window.

"Stand down, Commander Kirk."

"Captain?" she asks, hesitantly, because although she _sees_ Robau standing in front of her, she stood with Eliana at the memorial service, knows he's gone just like George. His dark eyes are focused on Eliana and Aurelan in the bed, and Winona edges nearer until she can reach out and brush her fingers across the coarse fabric of his uniform jacket.

The touch draws his attention; the red light flares behind her when his gaze settles on her face.

"You need to be more careful, commander," he tells her, the stern warning of a father to a child. "There is no room for the living in a house where the dead too often come to visit."

She draws in a breath to ask more, but Eliana wakes with a sob and her dead husband's name on her lips, rousing the children in turn; Winona blinks and the room is serenely moonlit, her own reflection staring wide-eyed back at her from the mirror on the opposite wall.

**Author's Note:**

> for the Where_no_Woman July Drabblefest; also, my longer piece for the Awesome Ladies Ficathon, only I don't think I'm going to have it finished by the 27th. Part 1 of potentially 5.


End file.
